Severe air pollution can be extremely harmful to the population, thus being able to anticipate the occurrence of severe pollution episodes is useful for people to plan their like around them (e.g., avoid exercising in bad air days). Also, in countries such as Chile, France, and China, where severe air pollution episodes struck quite frequently, the government has the capability to invoke temporary measures to reduce emissions that could lower the impact of such episodes. However, these measures need to be invoked before the episode unfolds to have the desired impact; Thus there is a growing need to have accurate air quality forecasts that could predict pollution episodes a few days in advance. This session focuses on research activities related to the air quality forecasting of severe pollution episodes from various anthropogenic and natural sources. Relevant topics include but are not limited to: 1) linkage between severe pollution episodes and large-scale meteorology and climate change; 2) development of air quality forecasting tools and observational and modeling studies aimed to improve the forecasting, and 3) transition of the forecasting to operations.

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